She draws in a long, deep breath. “Sarah, I want you to listen to me. Foxglove is not like other homes. And you are not like other girls. I have told you the stories since you were a little girl. I’ve warned you about the dangers here, warned you to listen to me.”
“I didn’t mean to—” I stammer, but she holds her hands up, silencing me with a single move.
“It wasn’t so long ago I was your age, sneaking around to learn the secrets too, you know?”
My eyes go wide. It seems impossible that Mama ever broke a rule.
She gives me a little laugh. “You are a Wilde, my love. You are part of me, and I…you.” She closes her eyes with a soft nod, and when she opens them, her gaze hardens for the briefest moment. “All I’ve ever wanted to do was keep you safe. You and your sisters, and now your baby brother, too. This house, Foxglove, has kept us safe for generations. It knows who we are. It knows our blood. Our scent. Our strengths and our weaknesses.”
She stoppers the bottle and closes the salve, spreading her hands across her skirt. “But the secrets it holds must be keptin our family, do you understand me? Really, really understand. You must never tell a soul.”
I swallow. Her voice is deadly serious, and it scares me more than I’d like to admit. “I didn’t tell anyone. How could I? I was alone. I just…I saw the door, and I wanted to know where it went.”
Her eyes go soft, and she takes my hand in hers, pulling me down to the floor, to her lap. She rests her cheek against mine so we’re both looking into the fire, and her voice is in my ear. “I know, child. Oh, do I know. But Foxglove…it is not a place for curiosity. Not until you’re old enough to understand it all.”
I lean against her cheek with more of my weight, and she rocks us back and forth like she did when I was a child. As in those days, my body is heavy and tired in her arms. My mother. My safe space. “When will I be old enough?”
“Soon.” She kisses my cheek. “Too soon, I’m afraid. For now, just know that this place will always protect you as long as you are of our blood. But that protection comes at a price.”
“A price?” I don’t understand.
Her next words sound strange to me, old like the earth and the wind and the skipping stones my sisters and I play with. Like she’s reciting an incantation.
“Only Wilde women can know the secrets Foxglove holds. Never men. Never outsiders. If they do…if we reveal her secrets…the house demands a price. I will tell you the way my mother told me, and her mother before that. Foxglove is one of the only places in this world that does not belong to men. And it never will. If they try to take her, it is our duty to protect her. She is our responsibility. She is ours, and we are hers.”
A chill creeps down my spine as the weight of her words hang in the air, heavy and confusing. “Not even Papa?”
“Or your brother,” she tells me, though I hadn’t thought of him. I hadn’t thought he’d count.
“But…why? Why can’t we tell them? They are Wildes, too.” And it’s true. My father goes by my mother’s name, even if it’s not biblical. Even if people in town whisper about it.
“Because they are not the same,” she says, her voice barely above a breath. “It is not the same. Someday you will understand.” She places a hand on my chest, over my heart. “Foxglove protects the Wilde woman. She has always protected us. It’s why our ancestors built her. Why they chose this land, these stones. It’s why they gave her secrets. But this was the cost, that no man could ever take that power. Her power. Not even when we love them.”
I still don’t understand. She eases me off her lap, though, standing and brushing the dust from her skirt, from my legs. “Now, I won’t punish you for tonight if you’ll promise to forget what you saw. If you vow to never speak of it again and never enter the passage unless I tell you to.”
“I promise.” I grasp the fabric of my shift in my fists at my sides.
“And you promise never to tell your sisters, never to show them?”
“I promise.”
“And your brother.” Those words don’t sound like a question.
“I’ll never tell anyone, Mama. I promise you.”
She brushes my arms with her palms, tucking a finger under my chin to get me to look at her once more. “I know it feels like a punishment, my darling, but I promise you’ll understand all of this one day. Foxglove has its secrets, and those secrets will be yours one day to protect.”
Those words seem to glow in the air like fairy dust, and I feel as if I’m watching them in the air as they travel straight from her lips to my chest and settle into a warm place. I feel the truth of her promise, the weight of it as it sinks into my bones, into my flesh as real as if I’ve been branded by a hot iron. As if thehouse itself is reminding me of my promise. Of the deal we’ve just made—Foxglove and myself.
Whether I like it or not, I have responsibility in my blood. The house chose me. I am its protector, and someday, her secrets will be mine.
CHAPTER FIVE
CORINNE WILDE - PRESENT DAY
Unlike our old home’s front door, with a large glass pane and windows on either side of it, Foxglove’s door is solid wood. Practical out here, affordable when it was built, but now, standing at the door with someone knocking on the other side and no way to look and see who it might be, I’m regretting it. It will be one of the first things I change as soon as I can manage it.
I cross the room into the kitchen and peer out the closest window, but I’m too far down the cabin’s wall to see who’s standing there. If they drove, I’d be able to see their car parked behind ours, which it’s not. Whoever it is has walked here.
